Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Media Mensch

For the last few years, I have been thinking about my early career in media at WNBC Radio, WYNY-FM radio, Home Box Office/Cinemax, The Movie Channel/MTV and realized how interesting that time was and how fortunate I was to be working in that industry.

Some of the people I worked with early in my are some of the most influential people in media today and over the past twenty five years. This blog is a way to capture some of those stories from the "old days" or the "age of innocence" when we were creating and inventing the early days of cable television.

From 1977 through today, I have been fortunate to have worked with Robert Pittman (Creator of MTV and former COO of AOL), Tom Freston (Chairman, Viacom), Judy McGrath (CEO, MTV Networks), Jeff Bewkes (CEO, Time-Warner), Herb Scannel, (President, MTV Networks), Brown Johnson (VP Programming, Nick Jr., Bill Roedy, President, MTV International and many others.

During those early years I had the opportunity to be at Bruce Springteen's first concert at Madison Square Garden and presented him with an WNBC satin baseball jacket, was one of a few dozen people at "Cousin Brucies" last radio show at WNBC.
I was also the "N-Car" driver in the summer of 1978 in which over 2 million people had "WNBC is going to make me rich" bumber stickers on their car. That summer I gave away trips to London, Kawasaki JetSkis.

At HBO, we worked hard and played hard. I was responsible for the HBO Premium Incentive program that included all the coffee mugs, beer steins, t-shirts, tennis shirts, directors chairs and other items that had the HBO logo on them.
We had our holiday parties at Radio City Music Hall and the Museum of Natural History under the Great Whale.